PIONEER PILOT SALLY STREMPEL

Kenan HeiseCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Sally Strempel, 82, a pilot for over 50 years and owner for 16 years of Sally`s Flying School at Palwaukee Airport in Wheeling, claimed she flew over a million miles ''without scratching an airplane.''

Services for Mrs. Strempel, a resident of Des Plaines, will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday in Christ Church, United Church of Christ, Cora and Henry Streets, Des Plaines. She died Monday in Sun City, Ariz., after suffering what was apparently a heart attack.

Mrs. Strempel, who flight-tested 1,367 pilots and taught and supervised the training of more than 3,000, said in a 1960 interview that women are better pilots because ''they are more instinctive, master detail more quickly and take nothing for granted.''

Among the women she taught was her own daughter, Jeanette Currier. Mrs. Strempel was the first flight instructor to teach and solo her own daughter and the first to do the same for her grandson.

Her first airplane ride was in 1925.

Her husband learned to fly and then taught her. She did public relations for barnstormers in Oklahoma from 1929 to 1934.

She officially soloed in 1936 and received her license in 1937.

In 1938 and 1939, she was doing aerobatics in airshows. She was billed as ''The Thriller.''

In 1941, the government sent her to Denver to train for a commercial pilot`s rating and in 1942 she took air traffic training in Kansas City, Mo. During the war, she was made manager of the Racine, Wis., airport, and helped get it licensed.

Mrs. Strempel was the first woman in Illinois and one of the first five nationally to be designated by the Federal Aviation Administration as a flight instructor, who could give private and commercial exams to student pilots.

She bought a flight school in 1950, renamed it Sally`s Flying School and retained it until 1966.

The Illinois chapter of OX5 Aviation Pioneers, of which she was president, is composed of pilots who have flown planes powered by OX5 engines before the early 1940s. She was also president of the Illinois chapter of the The Silver Wings, made up of those who have been flying for more than 25 years. She was a life member of the 99th International, an organization of women pilots.

She was also a member of the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton.

Survivors, besides her daughter, include three grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and a sister, Gertrude Dixon.